Tuesday, March 1, 2011

It is Safe to Totally Die Now


Danielle got revved up last night filling out a LegalZoom form for our will. She was reading a book whose chapter was something like, you could die at any moment. And she got to thinking about how unfair it was to our kids that we didn't have anything in place in the event of our mutual tragic severe deaths.
Anyways, she filled it out and I learned that her funeral wishes include burning her corpse until it is rendered into ashes. Well that makes sense. Also, she's not too picky about where those ashes are scattered, as long as they are not scattered in snow (seriously, she really hates snow -and I tried twice, unsuccessfully, to move the Nelsons down to Florida) or flushed down the toilet. The toilet thing makes sense, but on second thought I wonder about her assumptions about me and the kids if she felt she actually had to make a legal statement forbidding us to flush her carcass down a toilet. Anyways.
And, from time to time, I think about what my tombstone might read. After spending the better part of two summers as a graveyard caretaker in Massachusetts, I've seen some cool ones and some really freaking old ones. And it got me thinking, at a young age, about my own mortality and the options that might be available to me to communicate a very short message to some kid mowing my grave grass 200 years from now. Really. And the best tombstone I've ever seen was that of the fictional character, Royal Tenenbaum, which read "Died tragically rescuing his family from the wreckage of a destroyed sinking battleship" which is only true metaphorically -and even then it's a bit of a stretch. Anyways, that's a hell of an inscription and I'd like something like it for myself.
Then it was my turn. I felt rushed because I have always wanted to have a pretty awesome finale and some kind of cool tombstone inscription. She said that I could always indicate that specific instructions for the handling of my totally dead body could me specified at a later date -so now I'm formulating a plan. Ideally I would be ground up and put into the municipal water supply but that wish would, obviously, have to be off the record (did everyone read and comprehend this sentence in its entirety? Wink, wink).
In summary, Stephen Tait is runner up for the executor of my will (is that ok, Steve??). Seriously.

So goodbye seatbelts and healthy living, we can play fast and loose!

3 comments:

TAITx3 said...

wow. that's a thinker...

Susu said...

For your tombstone I'm thinking something along the lines of "Here lies John, Burton and Chris' spawn"
and Danielle's ashes could totally be released Big Lebowski style.

The Jaymac Clan said...

Jason is insistant on being shot into space. There are actually places that will send your ashes up for you. We will also be playing the beginning of Star Trek the next gengeration before the launch. Space...the final frontier...